Per Team Skills

Comments

Then the meta around the comm / hiveskill need to be established as well for that. How is it calculated for the average hiveskill per Team and how long can you be on the field till you count as fieldplayer.

Some thinking:
For example the average hiveskill is only correct for me with with for example average ~2k as commander / ~4k as player
If I'm at least 70% in the hive... otherwise I'm more of a fieldplayer... it can be normal for good players to leave the hive frequently as aliens... less as marine but if happens... for example you build armslab as a commander while the rest spread out

So that means If I leave the hive for more then 30% of my playtime the calculated hiveskill should be 4k...

Then the meta around the comm / hiveskill need to be established as well for that. How is it calculated for the average hiveskill per Team and how long can you be on the field till you count as fieldplayer.

These are the correct questions to ask but I don't know the answers to them.

For example the average hiveskill is only correct for me with with for example average ~2k as commander / ~4k as player

I work with similar ELO as you, and as you probably experience as well, it is impossible to win a game as a commander for this reason and that simply means less overall capable commanders in pubs. That impacts EVERYBODY negatively. We simply have worse games in general as a result of this disparity.

Do I know the solution? No. But I have a feeling that there should be a relatively easy solution, we just need to find it.

I tried making a comm-only smurf. But it is sooo cumbersome and boring to level the character up. And most of the servers don't allow you to command.

If I'm at least 70% in the hive... otherwise I'm more of a fieldplayer... it can be normal for good players to leave the hive frequently as aliens... less as marine but if happens... for example you build armslab as a commander while the rest spread out

Even if we can't identify or theory-craft our way to the perfect solution right away, I think we can identify the correct direction. Why not start with defining the commander as whoever was in the hive/chair the most, and work from there? Maybe we will find out that this is too abusable and correct it, but I think it's worth the effort to take even a small step in this direction.

So that means If I leave the hive for more then 30% of my playtime the calculated hiveskill should be 4k...

If you are performing all of your commander duties and winning the game, while spending 30% of playtime outside the hive.. Then why does that matter? That should still be attributed to your commanding skills in a fashion imo.

But the shuffle algorithm doesn't know who the commander is going to be.

It will have to predict the statistical likelihood of a player choosing to become the commander, take into account their relative commander skill levels, and adjust the shuffle accordingly.

Hell, the game can even try to influence who chooses to be commander by spawning them right in front of the command chair/hive and others farther away.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to play Natural Selection 2. The gameplay is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of military strategy and advanced mathematics you won't even win a single game. Theres also the game's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into the game. The maps and artwork draw heavily from Riddley Scott's Alien franchise, for instance. The players understand this stuff, they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depth of the game, to realise that it's not just great, that it also says something about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Natural Selection 2 truly ARE idiots. of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in the Marines' existential catchphrase "how do I get to be so good", which itself is a cryptic reference to the high degree of intelligence required to play the game as intended. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion when spectating a game. What fools... how I pity them.
And, yes, by the way, i DO have a Fade tatoo. And no, you cannot see it. it's for the ladies' eyes only, and even then they have to demonstrate that they are within 50 hive skill points of my own (preferable lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid.

But the shuffle algorithm doesn't know who the commander is going to be.

It will have to predict the statistical likelihood of a player choosing to become the commander, take into account their relative commander skill levels, and adjust the shuffle accordingly.

Hell, the game can even try to influence who chooses to be commander by spawning them right in front of the command chair/hive and others farther away.

Yeah, this is the hard part. We can build whatever model we want using the data after the game, and probably learn a good value for commander skill, but if we can't control what will happen during the game, we can't really shuffle using it.

Something me and @IronHorse were thinking of is a sort of "voluntary smurf nerf" system. You could turn on something that makes all the mechanics worse for you (maybe you have less hp or your hits do less damage), and in exchange, hive treats you as if your skill is 50% of its real value. This would let highly skilled players play on public servers without wrecking quite as much, and would also let them comm or gorge without worrying about having to carry the team.

I don't think a commander hive skill would be useful unless gameplay was changed. You could shuffle with commander hive skill if players were locked into the chair and hive all game. This would help balance games but change gameplay in a not insignificant way.

A 4000 hive skill field player could get in the chair and then switch with someone else on the team and probably win the game because of that.

From my perspective UWE has been trying to both with what little resources they have given to the game. They don't have an AAA budget, let alone an indie game budget. They have the budget of a game that has been out 6 years. I want to say, don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing. I just don't think they have the resources to do it. Unlike many of the people on the forums, I guess I am just happy they are at least trying even though I may not like what they end up doing.

I could imagine trying to ensure that each team had similar commander skill in addition to similar skill, just to ensure that there's someone willing to command. But I don't see any way to solve the problem of a normally carrying player who wants to command without and explicit handicap system.

Something me and @IronHorse were thinking of is a sort of "voluntary smurf nerf" system. You could turn on something that makes all the mechanics worse for you (maybe you have less hp or your hits do less damage), and in exchange, hive treats you as if your skill is 50% of its real value. This would let highly skilled players play on public servers without wrecking quite as much, and would also let them comm or gorge without worrying about having to carry the team.

No this just does not work. We tried it already. It completely destroys the enjoyment of the game.

Back when we had the handicap console command, I'd set mine to 30%-40% weapon damage. And I'd still win most if not all the skulk engagements in the early game on pub servers, only now with much more effort, which is great and fun. But what happens is as soon as lerks come out, they can literally stay stationary and SPIKE you to death before you can kill him. You can't reasonably outdps it. So as soon as lifeforms are out, you're essentially useless. It makes you a waste of medpacks for the commander. It kills any enjoyment as a marine, at least for me and everybody I discussed it with who used it.

You can say the same thing about an hp handicap. And something like a movement handicap is arguably even worse, you will just be a poor team mate not being able to rotate when you need to etc.

Moreover. I really dislike the idea when people "telegraph" that they are using handicaps. Like somebody will write in their nick "@NEW_MOUSE" or "@NO_HUD" (this is a thing especially in arena shooters). I mean, sometimes I will handicap myself in Reflex by not taking important items vs weaker players, but I don't tell the other player, I find it rude toxic to telegraph it.

I don't think a commander hive skill would be useful unless gameplay was changed. You could shuffle with commander hive skill if players were locked into the chair and hive all game. This would help balance games but change gameplay in a not insignificant way.

A 4000 hive skill field player could get in the chair and then switch with someone else on the team and probably win the game because of that.

Win the game, perhaps, but for what? They would be unlikely to gain elo. I dare say, somebody who gets to 4k elo, isn't overly concerned about winning random easy pub games, these players generally want to improve. Or maybe that is my optimism speaking

It wouldn't even have to be a 4000 hive skill. That was an arbitrarily high number. There is only a handful that high. Even a 2000 skill player could do it give how low skill most games are.

From my perspective UWE has been trying to both with what little resources they have given to the game. They don't have an AAA budget, let alone an indie game budget. They have the budget of a game that has been out 6 years. I want to say, don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing. I just don't think they have the resources to do it. Unlike many of the people on the forums, I guess I am just happy they are at least trying even though I may not like what they end up doing.

If you see the hiveskill at the scoreboard and the comm is out more than a minute after the start you see the difference in Hiveskill... maybe this will get highlighted by a servermsg..so you know who is responsible... normally you can restart the game in the first 3 minutes and I think most players do that already.
The hiveskill is normally totally different after a start due to leavers/latejoiners - I think that is more problematic and destroying balance than commanders who switch to field.. just highlight them after a while and the abuse can easily be dealt with!

I think you should focus more on the benefit and try to give the ppl the information who might be abusing instead of trying to have a perfect system.

I’m with @Handschuh, yeah people can abuse the ELO by switching out of the chair but it’s not really any different then a high level player disconnecting or joining. If I have to quit mid game my team ELO drops 300 ish... oops my bad sorry my kid woke up early from his nap.

However if I’m a 2500 skill commander and a 4000 skill marine and I start as a commander on a 1600 hive shuffle. Then I jump out of the chair my team skill goes from 1600 to 1800. But then one of the 2000 skill player jumps in the chair who happens to be a 1500 skill commander... and it drops down to 1730.... and the skill difference is only 130 (1600v1730).

Basically even if people try to abuse the system it would have 1/2 the impact of the same player simply leaving or joining.

Oh and the alt account for commanding is such a pain.... and people get pissed. 3skulks bitting the chair get supper pissed when a 2500 skill commander with 200 hours jumps out and kills them. Or you don’t get to the chair fast enough so you have to quit or play dumb. It’s fun to toy with skulks and intentionally miss by shooting circles around them, but you give yourself away when you smoke the lerk/fade .

How would you make it work with the normal flow of the beginning of the round? It seems like you could only do it if teams were shuffled after both teams have comms, but since the game starts almost immediately then it seems rare for a shuffle vote to pass in that interval.

That seems like an opportunity for an "auto shuffle" mod. You would join teams to express your team preference. Once both sides have comms, regular players are automatically shuffled before the game starts using both commander and regular skills. I'm not sure what role it would have in vanilla.

How would you make it work with the normal flow of the beginning of the round? It seems like you could only do it if teams were shuffled after both teams have comms, but since the game starts almost immediately then it seems rare for a shuffle vote to pass in that interval.

That seems like an opportunity for an "auto shuffle" mod. You would join teams to express your team preference. Once both sides have comms, regular players are automatically shuffled before the game starts using both commander and regular skills. I'm not sure what role it would have in vanilla.

Or just don't auto-start the game when there's two commanders, and instead automatically start a shuffle vote

The difference between a high skill person leaving and the potential abuse is incentives. Simply leaving the server does not have help the person who left even if it ensures the remaining team will lose. A high skill player does recieve a benefit from leaving and joining the other team, but that is difficult to do. Switching out with another field player is far easier to accomplish with the benefit.

I am not saying that this is unsolvable, but that it could be a problem. There is also a problem with shuffling with commander skills, but that too could be solved.

From my perspective UWE has been trying to both with what little resources they have given to the game. They don't have an AAA budget, let alone an indie game budget. They have the budget of a game that has been out 6 years. I want to say, don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing. I just don't think they have the resources to do it. Unlike many of the people on the forums, I guess I am just happy they are at least trying even though I may not like what they end up doing.

Commanders that abandon their post don't get any ELO increase, how about that?

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to play Natural Selection 2. The gameplay is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of military strategy and advanced mathematics you won't even win a single game. Theres also the game's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into the game. The maps and artwork draw heavily from Riddley Scott's Alien franchise, for instance. The players understand this stuff, they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depth of the game, to realise that it's not just great, that it also says something about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Natural Selection 2 truly ARE idiots. of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in the Marines' existential catchphrase "how do I get to be so good", which itself is a cryptic reference to the high degree of intelligence required to play the game as intended. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion when spectating a game. What fools... how I pity them.
And, yes, by the way, i DO have a Fade tatoo. And no, you cannot see it. it's for the ladies' eyes only, and even then they have to demonstrate that they are within 50 hive skill points of my own (preferable lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid.

I just don't subscribe to this idea that you have to tie the commander to the chair for the ranking to work. Let the commander be outside the chair for 30% of the game, I don't see the problem in it. Who ever spends the most time should just be defined as the commander imo.

Why is having a good shot in the chair, seen as a "cheat"? Better commanders, better games.

I understand the issue wrt shuffling, but the elo stuff I think is pretty straight forward.

@SantaClaws yeah, I'd just use the same exponentially weighted time fraction as everything else. It's no problem at all to have multiple fractional commanders in the round. It's hard to motivate doing it if we can't see how it would improve shuffle. I became convinced that per team skills were worth adding when I realized they would help shuffle even if we never used them directly.

OK How about this then... In the event of a succesful shuffle vote, we lock the chair so only players with similar field elo can lend it? So a 2k elo player cannot replace a 4k elo player. Succesful eject vote opens the lock again for all elo players?

@SantaClaws That would only break the game in one way or another... like you get baserushed / go out and die... someone needs to instantly redrop/beacon/whatever... and then he cannot join? wtf?

I think my Idea with 70% at least in the chair get's the hiveskill / his hiveskill counts will improve the chance of more highskilled players going to command on average. Since they're the ones who usually know what to do (even if they're slow) and it can lead to more quality games overall... Since this leads to have less rookies in the chair before they even know what the techtree is...

@SantaClaws That would only break the game in one way or another... like you get baserushed / go out and die... someone needs to instantly redrop/beacon/whatever... and then he cannot join? wtf?

Alright. Make a security measure; if all players that fit the elo criteria for commanding are in the spawn que: open the chair for all players.

I could probably think of endless examples... there is no point...
What if I'm alive, our CC was lost and the second one was built in Sub... I doubt it's worth the effort to try to avoid every scenerio I like my 30% / 70% time better

My Solution: If you start a game as commander AND/OR you are in the chair for >50% of your time in round, YOUR ELO for commander will be calculated regardless AND the calculation will use your commander ELO in the calc not your shooting ELO.

Ok, let’s play this out.

Abuse attempt-
So I’m a 4K shooter and a 2.5k commander and I start in the chair and get out. My team gets an effective 200-300 skill buff so we win. Now my commander ELO goes up, I do this over and over, and now my commander ELO is also 4K. I have basically screwed myself out of being able to command and am back where we started.

Legit commander-
On the other hand I’m still a 4K Shooter, 2.5K commander, if I jump out of the chair and rush through a PG and save it from 3 skulks... yes it should still affect your commander ELO because commanders CAN get out and shoot that is part of the role.

Legit shooter-
Similarly if I am a rine and I jump in the chair to drop an ip because my commander died... this should not effect my commander ELO because I am still a shooter.

I am probably completely missing the point here but would it be hard to implement a status for players that say "I want to command" and the shuffle would shuffle 2 equally skilled commanders in the hive or CC. That ofcourse after the commander skill value got implemented. This doesn't deal with all problems mentioned above like "what if commander leaves hive (or gets ejected)" but I think this might be a good start to shuffle field teams with similar skill and commanders with similar skill

Making a voting menu/GUI for having a commander would be cumbersome for both the players and devs...
You'd have to handle every possible thing that could go wrong, and the game would soon become a mini-game of comm management.

I'm not convinced that the way forward is to model every aspect of player skill (hyperbole!); the current hive system is good enough like 95% of the times, which is a really good number considering the asymmetric nature of the game. I'd love to see separated skills by team, but no more than that. Even that system has edge cases where it can produce worse results than the current would (as people outlined already).

I'd love to see separated skills by team, but no more than that. Even that system has edge cases where it can produce worse results than the current would (as people outlined already).

As I've opined elsewhere, there are legitimate arguments in favor of an aggressive shuffle mode that seeks to minimize standard deviation within teams at all costs, even if it means less player choice in team selection.

It's also not clear that there's consensus against it. Aggressive shuffle has plenty of votes. The poll has a small sample size, to be sure, and I assume that a majority of players prefer to be able to pick their preferred team with ease. But that's not my point. Worse is relative in this case.

Granted, because of these effects, an aggressive shuffle mode should be optional, either as 1) a non-standard mode of a future "official shuffle" feature wherein shine's shuffle functionality is folded into the main game, 2) as a "quasi-official" shuffle mode within shine, or 3) as some other kind of mod. Point being: let server ops decide.

As for the other bit:

Commanding is absolutely a unique role requiring a special skillset, and yet constitutes a bottleneck that both teams must "deal with" on the regular (across a non-trivial number of rounds). Many comms hop in simply because nobody else will. Many players with high field skill values avoid comming for the reasons already mentioned. Anything we can do to encourage players to comm / learn to comm is worth consideration. I don't think we need to get more granular than marine and alien skill values re: field ability, but I'd love to see some way to compartmentalize commander skill values to improve shuffle results and/or at least give high ELO players the flexibility to develop their commander skill separately from their field skill. There are many ways to do this, and it's worth the time it takes to theorycraft the ideal system. As the conversation has indicated, the trick is in utilizing a commander skill value in a way that isn't exploitable or confusing.

commander wouldn't be an issue if being a commander would feel awesome but this might be an issue with ns2's core design. The only role that has to be filled is a RTS role in a game that is for most part an fps game.

Sorry but no... Commander wouldn't be an issue if the community wasn't so mercilessly cruel to even decent commanders...

I'm actually banned from commanding on one server, and the absolute worst possible offense I can even imagine I made was not being "fast enough" with meds... I have never once trolled the chair/hive in any way.. yet even I have a comm ban..

Even good commanders are harassed if they don't do what someone else thinks they should... Just yesterday I was in a game where we had a great comm and his worst offense was that he was a little slow, yet at the end of that game he was literally being screamed at by half a dozen people for "ruining the game" when he did nothing even remotely wrong.

It's a sad fact that you can do everything 100% PERFECTLY and still get blamed if your team loses.

I must admit I see the whole 'skill' or "the possibilities" of/for a team. And it is the teams decision (or ignorance, ...) to force a skilled fighter into the CC. Like everything else in NS, It's a decision on how you use your ressources you have at hand.